Did COP28 Succeed or Fail?

Wednesday officially marked the end of the year’s most important climate summit, the 28th UN Conference of the Parties. Hosted by a petrostate, led by an oil chief, and attended by an unprecedented number of fossil fuel lobbyists, COP28 was among the most controversial in history. After more than two weeks of intense negotiations, countries finally agreed on an unprecedented deal that touches on topics including climate finance, adaptation, food security, gender, and, most importantly, calls for the first time for a “transition” away from fossil fuels. But there’s much more to it. To answer the question of whether COP28 was successful or not, we must look at the bigger picture.

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What Was Achieved at COP28?

1. Global Stocktake

As set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, COP28 marked a historic milestone by conducting the first Global Stocktake (GST), a comprehensive assessment that evaluates the progress made by nations towards their climate goals. The GST, viewed as the key output of COP28, encompasses all aspects that were subject to negotiation and can now serve as a foundation for countries to enhance their climate action plans, which are due by 2025.

Acknowledging the scientific evidence indicating the need for a 43% reduction in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 compared to 2019 levels to limit global warming to 1.5C, the stocktake highlights that Parties are currently falling short of their goals outlined in the 2015 Paris Accord and urges them to take concerted action on a global scale to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency improvements by 2030. 

In terms of much needed action on global warming adaptation, the final COP28 deal requires countries to deliver a national adaptation plan by 2030 — 51 countries have already done so. As for the Adaptation Fund, a few developed countries have pledged a total of 160 million, half of what is needed to move forward on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). The Fund was established in 2001 “to finance concrete adaptation projects and programmes in developing country Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.” Contributions to the Fund announced in Dubai by some European countries, including the UK, Italy, and France, are notably low.

You might also like: A Comprehensive Guide to COP28 and the Global Stocktake

2. Fossil Fuels

The latest Global Carbon Budget Report, launched on Day 6, suggests that global fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions this year are set to hit a record high of 36.8 billion tonnes, an increase of 1.1% relative to 2022 levels and 1.4% above pre-pandemic levels. Paired with emissions deriving from land-use change – such as deforestation – global CO2 emissions will likely reach 40.9 billion tonnes.

Against this backdrop, several new pledges and alliances on fossil fuels dominated the first week of the summit.

Nine new countries — including the US, COP’s host UAE, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Cyprus, Norway, the Dominican Republic and Iceland — joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a large group of nations, sub-national governments, businesses, and organisations pledging to phase out “unabated” coal power first founded at the Glasgow COP26 two years ago. 

Colombia made waves by becoming the first Latin American country as well as the largest fossil fuel producer to endorse the Fossil Fuel non-Proliferation Treaty, a bloc of pioneer nations seeking a negotiation mandate for a fossil fuel phaseout. The push for a Treaty is spearheaded by a bloc of 10 nation-states from Latin America, the Pacific, the Caribbean, and South East Asia. The global network behind the proposal is now formed by 2,200 civil society organisations, over 3,000+ scientists and academics and Nobel laureates, and the World Health Organisation (WHO). 100 cities including Los Angeles, Kolkata, Lima, Vancouver, London, and Warsaw, more than 600 Parliamentarians across the world and a growing number of businesses have also joined the calls.

Methane

Methane, a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent in trapping the heat than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a two-decade period that also possesses a global warming potential 25 times more than that of CO2, drives roughly 30% of the global warming, making action to cut emissions imperative, according to a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report released last week.

At COP28, some countries have come forward and explicitly announced new measures to tackle methane pollution. The US, for example, announced new rules to slash planet-warming methane emissions from oil and gas by nearly 80%. The biggest pledge came from 50 oil and gas companies – including giants ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, and Adnoc, ConocoPhillips, and BP –  which signed up to the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter sponsored by the COP28 presidency. By doing so, they agreed to stem releases of methane to near zero by 2030 and stop routine flaring of natural gas. While the targets are not legally binding, signatories – which together account for about one-third of global oil and gas production – have to submit a plan to meet them by 2025.

The World Bank also announced a multi-donor trust fund that will mobilise an initial US$250 million to help developing nations cut CO2 and methane emissions generated by the oil and gas industry. The initiative secured US$25 million each from six major oil companies, including BP, Eni, Shell, and TotalEnergies. Some countries also pledged money to the Fund, including the UAE ($100 million), the US ($2 million), Germany ($1.5 million), and Norway ($1 million). Remarkably, big players Chevron and Exxon Mobil opted out.

The Bank also said it intends to launch at least 15 country-led programs in the next 18 months with the aim to slash up to 10 million tons of methane.

For reactions to the COP28 final deal, check out this article: COP28 Deal Makes Unprecedented Call to ‘Transition Away’ From Fossil Fuels

3. Loss and Damage

On the opening day of COP28, delegates from nearly 200 countries approved a framework for the Loss and Damage Fund instituted at COP27 to help developing countries deal with the harm stoked by global warming. The framework, brought forward last month by the 24-member Transitional Committee (TC), a board tasked with the operationalisation of the fund, contains recommendations on how the fund would operate, including who would get the money, and who would pay.

The final text invites “financial contributions with developed country parties continuing to take this lead to provide financial resources for commencing the operationalisation of the Fund.” It also assures the World Bank as the fund’s host on a four-year interim basis – despite the US pushing to make this permanent. Developing nations initially expressed opposition to the idea of the Bank hosting the Fund due to their lack of confidence in the institution’s significant shift towards promoting climate action.

In Dubai, pledges for the fund exceeded US$700 million, including $300-400 million from the European Union (EU) collectively, $100 from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), $50 million from the UK, $17.5 million from the US, and $10 million from Japan.

Nevertheless, critics pointed out that contributions to the Fund represent less than 0.2% of the economic and non-economic losses developing countries face every year from global warming, adding pressure to developed nations to enhance their contributions and provide additional pledges in line with their historical responsibility for loss and damage.

On Tuesday, the UN published new side documents on climate finance, announcing the launch of the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage in 2024, which will be jointly hosted by two UN bodies and will work to “streamline the pathways through which climate-affected nations and regions are able to access technical assistance to prevent losses and damages, and to rectify them when they do occur.”

You might also like: Explainer: What Is ‘Loss and Damage’ Compensation?

4. Climate Finance

Rich nations are facing immense pressure to restore trust with developing countries due to their failure to meet the $100 billion per year target on time. Indeed, on “long-term finance”, the final agreement “notes with deep regret” that the $100 billion target – agreed upon in 2011 at COP15 – was not met in 2021, and it “looks forward to further info” on delivery in 2022. Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said that preliminary data indicate that the goal “looks likely to have already been met as of 2022.”

Moreover, recent data shows that rich nations are also not on track to double adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025.

Regarding nature, the recent UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) State of Finance for Nature Report suggests that finance flows to activities directly harming nature were more than 30 times larger than the total investments in nature-based solutions last year, which totalled around US$200 billion. According to the UN agency, investments in harmful activities from both public and private sectors each year amount to nearly $7 trillion – roughly 7% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

Countries, especially wealthy ones, are under immense pressure to pledge money to tackle the climate crisis and social injustices that arise from it. Here is a list of the main climate finance announcements at COP28:

• US Vice President Kamala Harris said that the Biden-Harris Administration will pledge an additional $3 billion in funding to the UN Green Climate Fund created in 2010 to support climate action in developing countries. The announcement came on top of $9.3 billion in new commitments already announced by the UK, France, Germany, Japan and other nations.
• The UAE will put $30 billion into a profit-seeking climate finance fund called Alterra, which “plans to buy shares in green companies and to make money when their share prices rise and they pay dividends. According to the COP28 presidency, over $83 billion have been mobilised for the fund.
• The World’s largest multilateral development banks and other international financial institutions signed a Joint Declaration and launched a global “task force” to address high debt burdens, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Led by Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the Taskforce is set to meet for the first time in January 2024.
• Several financial commitments to the health sector were also announced as part of the COP28 UAE Climate and Health Declaration, which commits to putting health at the center of climate action and accelerate the development of climate-resilient, sustainable and equitable health systems. Contributions announced at COP28 in the past two weeks include a $300 million commitment by the Global Fund to prepare health systems, $100 million by the Rockefeller Foundation to scale up climate and health solutions, and an announcement by the UK Government of up to £54 million ($68 million). According to Humans Rights Watch, the declaration fails to address fossil fuels as the main source of GHG emissions driving climate change and air pollution.
• Social enterprise One Acre Fund in partnership International Finance Corporation, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the African Risk Capacity launched the ‘One Acre Fund Re’, a reinsurance fund that will provide a critical financial safety net for one million smallholder farmers in 2024 in the face of devastating impacts on crop yields. Natural disasters have caused about $3.8tn worth of lost crops and livestock production over the past three decades globally, yet only 3% of African farmers have insurance coverage.

5. Agriculture and Food Security

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched a Global Roadmap to 1.5C, the first of its kind for food systems. It sets out targets and timelines for ten areas where immediate action is required, including livestock, soil and water, and food loss and waste.

152 countries – which together represent 5.7 billion people and 75% of all emissions from global food production and consumption – also signed the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, the result of a year of negotiations between the COP28 Presidency and farmer groups and civil society organisations from Africa. It commits governments to formally include food and agriculture in national climate plans – an unprecedented pledge. By signing it, countries pledge to work to reduce GHG emissions from processes related to producing and consuming for the first time and to scale up funding.

The Declaration has garnered widespread approval. “It’s great to finally have food on the COP menu,” said Clement Metivier, a climate and biodiversity policy expert at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for Nature in the UK. “There is really a growing momentum around food systems transformation to tackle both the biodiversity and climate crisis.” At the same time, it has faced scrutiny from food experts, including the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, due to the lack of specific targets or explicit measures to tackle sustainable diets. “It’s at least a commitment at the highest level, but there’s still not much specificity in terms of what actually needs to be done,” said biodiversity and agriculture researcher Lim Li Ching at the Third World Network, a non-governmental organisation based in Malaysia. “We need an inclusion of food systems and phasing out of fossil fuels to be built into the revision of national climate commitments.”

Finally, Brazil, Cambodia, Norway, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda stepped forward as founding co-chairs and members of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF), a coalition aiming to transform national food systems to deliver universal access to affordable, nutritious and sustainable diets. The five countries are pledging to update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other action plans in line with updated National Food System Transformation Pathways and/or Implementation Plans by 2025 at the latest as well as to report annually on targets and priority intervention areas.

You might also like: Sustainable Diets: Will the First Global Declaration on Food-Related Emissions Work?

Controversies at COP28

While past COP meetings have had their fair share of controversies, COP28 might go down in history as the most controversial UN climate summit, with some climate activists calling it a “farce” due to the presence of thousands of fossil fuel representatives.

The fossil fuel-loaded summit, which this year has an unprecedented presence of oil and gas lobbyists – at least 2,456  according to a recent analysis – was hosted by one of the world’s richest petrostates in the world – the UAE. The Middle Eastern country is among the world’s ten largest oil producers, with an average of 3.2 million barrels of petroleum and liquids produced every day.

Tasked with selecting a president to oversee the climate negotiations, the UAE nominated a highly controversial figure: Sultan Al Jaber. Al Jaber is the head of state oil giant Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) – a state-owned company that pumps almost all the crude oil in the UAE and produces about 3.2 million barrels a day. He is also the UAE’s special envoy on climate change and minister of industry and technology.

In the runup to the summit, Al Jaber repeatedly emphasised the need to phase out fossil fuel emissions, rather than production, by focussing on the development of new emission reduction technologies. ​​“In a pragmatic, just and well-managed energy transition, we must be laser-focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives,” he said at a climate conference earlier this year.

A similar opinion was voiced by the head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Haitham Al Ghais last week. In a letter to 13 OPEC members written in response to the second draft of the COP28 final agreement – which hinted a call to phase-out fossil fuels – Al Ghais urged members to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions,” saying that the text put “undue and disproportionate pressure” on the fossil fuel industry.

He faced huge backlash for comments he had made during an exchange with former Irish president Mary Robinson at a live online event on November 21, where he denied climate science. There is “no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C,” he said.

What’s more, an investigation by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the BBC revealed last week that the COP28 presidency was planning to use meetings with foreign countries to push for oil and gas deals. Despite Al Jaber repeatedly denying his involvement, leaked documents show that fossil fuels were among the talking points in meetings between UAE energy companies and 15 nations ahead of the summit. This is further reinforced by the fact that the UAE granted access to at least 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists, nearly four times as many as last year and a number higher than all but one of the national delegations present in Dubai. Meat and livestock lobbyists and representatives from other planet-trashing industries have also left a mark on this year’s summit.

“To share seats with the Big Polluters in climate change conversations is to dine with the devil,” said Ogunlade Olamide Martins, Program Manager at the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA). “This unholy matrimony will only endorse “conflict of interest” and further facilitate the silence of honest agitation. COP’s conclusions must be independent of industries’ parasitic influences and must only address the concerns of the vulnerable masses.”

COP28 sponsors were also under the radar. According to an analysis carried out by Spendwell, out of 24 companies sponsoring the talks, only one has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with net-zero targets – so-called Science Based Targets – set by the UN. Last year, an investigation into COP27 sponsor Coca-Cola unveiled that the company had dramatically increased the use of plastic ahead of the summit.

Also worth mentioning is the trip of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the country, which, coincidentally or not, coincided with COP. While steering clear of the summit, his presence in the country to discuss energy – the first trip to the Middle East since Russia invaded Ukraine – cast a long shadow.

For a detailed analysis of the key announcements of the past two weeks, check out Earth.Org’s Week 1 and Week 2 recaps.

COP29: An Outlook

Following days of delicate negotiations, delegates last week selected the city of Baka, Azerbaijan’s capital, to be the host of next year’s climate talks.

Under UN rules, it was eastern Europe’s turn to take over the COP presidency, though an unanimous vote was required. Following Russia’s veto on all EU countries, delegates were left with just a few options, though not all cities on the list had the money and infrastructure needed to host a conference that every year sees tens of thousands of participants. While Azerbaijan and Armenia were initially vetoing each other, the latter eventually retracted its bid and backed Azerbaijan. 

Given this year’s controversies, the adverse reaction of activists and some countries to this decision did not come as a surprise. Having Azerbaijan – a highly fossil fuel-dependent state and the oldest oil-producing region in the world – host COP29, means effectively allowing Big Oil on the climate table, again.

Did COP28 Succeed or Fail?

Determining whether COP28 was a success or failure is a complex matter, and it would be oversimplifying to categorize it as either one. Certainly, the final deal went down in history as one of the boldest for containing relatively strong wording on fossil fuels for the first time in decades. One thing is sure: the outcomes of the Dubai summit have a profound impact on how the world moves forward in terms of climate action.

Undoubtedly, countries could have taken bolder actions – particularly in term of climate finance – and it is undeniable that responsibility lies with powerful actors, petro-state governments, and the fossil fuel industry for the insufficient progress and the notoriously absence of a call to phase out planet warming oil, gas, and coal.

However, it is also true that without UN climate conferences, making global strides would be incredibly challenging. COPs provide a platform for countries to engage in discussions and collaborate in managing the climate crisis. The progress made in addressing climate change since the historic adoption of the 1.5C goal in 2015 Paris Agreement has surpassed the achievements of the previous 25 years.

Featured image: UNclimatechange/Flickr

Check out Earth.Org’s full COP28 coverage, with explainers, op-eds, and breaking news from Dubai